God is a Girl
My body is limp.
Bruises already forming where my skull presses on the tub’s edge.
I feel beautiful - a princess in her quarters.
I think of how ceilings with fluorescent lamps have become more familiar to me than the sky and trees above.
I think of how the soles of my feet have come to know grout and marble, wood and asphalt, how they must have missed the forest floor.
Sometimes my legs are all I see of my body.
Sometimes I think of myself as a pair of knees, as feet. I have spent my life looking down at myself.
In all of my self-portraits I am feet.
They have been with me through every stage.
They have been me when I was a bruised kid. They have been me when the hair on them repulsed me.
They have been mine when I waxed the hairs, painfully. They have been mine afterward, when I felt woman, grown up.
They are mine still, hairless still,
yet I only feel human now.
A man and woman wash me.
My skin is red.
Their hands are cold. Their hands touch my skin.
My scalp is bare, their hands touch that too.
I wonder if to them it feels different from my other skin,
from the skin that was touched.
I think of all the hands that have ever felt me.
Of all the family who hugged me.
Of the boy who said he loved me.
Of my own hands.
Of how most people are good, most hands touch softly.
It was always me who did the most harm.
I look around me and feel at home,
The people behind the trees look at me with wonder.
I am beauty.
I am God - I am alive and real,
forest and girl, flesh and blood.
God is a girl.
The man lifts me up;
-my mother’s hands around me-
I got carried to her bed. She gave me one of her shirts.
I was a girl back then too.
I was also God back then too.
I wonder if my mom knew she was God too.
The woman cleans my feet.
My grandma used to tell me stories from the Bible when I was little. It was always New Testament.
It was always love and kindness.
There was always understanding.
She washes my feet like she understands.
I think of how one night I stayed up with my grandma, in the garden.
We ate strawberry mousse.
The heat kept us awake.
I am still that little girl.
My grandma was still God.
I come from a long line of Gods. All girls who belonged to men.
All hoped the new Gods would belong to no man.
I belong to the trees, to the soil and insects.
The man lays me on the moss.
The priestess smiles. Tears stream down her face.
I smile too.
We are all moss and forest floor, trees and birds.
We all sing.
My voice becomes theirs. Their voice vibrates in my throat.
Their tears roll down my face.
Death has always been on my mind.
Would I still be God after?
I am naked and the moss now knows my skin.
Their voices sing my last prayer.
My throat holds it for them, presents it as an offering;
Our voices, Abel’s smoke.
I think of how fragile Gods are.
It’s the priestess that holds the knife.
It’s my throat that splits open - I wonder about death.
It’s always been there, a Christmas gift under the tree.
I’ve always been a child.
I’ve always had trouble falling asleep when I’m excited.
My mother always picked the best gifts.
The priestess is now my mother; the knife is my mother.
The blood is my nightgown, her oversized T-shirt.
They hang me upside down from a tree.
My clothes pour downward into the moss.
I am a God.
They bathe in my blood, they cry.
Hands reach up, blood pours down.
My tears stream down their faces. My blood goes down their throats.
Their priestess sings my beauty.
She sings as I pour down, as I drip into the forest.
The birds too have my voice.
I’ve always wanted to be a singer;
always wanted to open my mouth and pour everything out.
To have people see it on my face, to have it echo inside their bodies.
I have my mouth open, turnspit coming out.
The fire makes my skin sing.
Everything I have ever felt pours across their faces,
Coils inside their bodies-
-my raw blood, now my song.
My body cooking.
The smell, also my song.
Their noses, also their ears.
Hear me sing!
Goosebumps on the skins of girls.
Girls know my song;
Girls have always felt the lyrics.
Girls are all-knowing.
My mother always knew everything.
Even before I told her. Even before I thought it,
she knew.
My grandma knew too;
They knew, and they belonged to men.
They were the Gods in the churches.
Stuck between the walls, risen with every prayer, awake for every sermon.
Slaves to the wills and desires of men.
Always confession day.
Always forgiving after repentance.
New Testament Gods of men.
Mother, Grandmother, God, all different words for saying ‘girl’.
I am a God of the Forests. I belong to no man.
I am a God of teenage girls who rip out pieces of my thighs,
who gossip, who feel so deeply,
who lick their lips to taste the fat that drips down.
I am a God of mothers who feed their children small bits of meat,
who tear my body along the muscle fibre,
who pray every night,
who steal a taste for every bit they give out.
I am a God of the fire, of hands getting burnt as they reach in,
A God of every person who takes my bones home.
Jawbone on the head of a little girl – princess with her crown.
I am a rib in the priestess’s hands,
Eve, daughter of God.
I am blood in the forest’s earth.
I am communion, soft lips parting,
Body of Christ – blood of the saviour.
I will also be a God at night, when they confess their sins.
And if I am no longer God, if I am just a collection of bone and memory,
I am also, then, a girl.
(Artwork by Ortaku)